Rectangular and gum-filled Oreos for China

Kraft Foods "biscuit research lab" in China is a place where all sorts of ideas are executed pertaining to unusual snacks. The outcome of two such ideas was the Rectangular Oreo and the Oreo filled with cucumber gum.

Oreo is a trademark for a popular round-shaped sandwich cookie, filled with white cream between two dark chocolate biscuits. It has become the best-selling cookie in the United States, through the 20th century and into the 21st.

With the ever-rising trend of consumption, it has become vital for food companies to get the right product into the market at the right time, while experimenting with the local flavors.

Kraft Foods “biscuit research lab” in China is one such place, where the Chinese try to experiment with popular flavors in demand and popular brand of biscuits, to create a market as well as demand for a new product, that takes birth out of such innovative ideas.

According to Director Maggie Wang, there are no bad ideas inside Kraft Foods’ biscuit research lab. One such product had a glob of chewing gum, instead of cream, stuffed neatly between a pair of Oreo’s famous dark chocolate biscuits, reported Reuters.

Though Wang didn’t mind tasting the product, it didn’t make it past the testing phase. “The taste was OK. The problem was that you could not swallow it,” she said, reported The Globe and Mail.

Not all ideas make it to the market. Few such ideas that never quite made it past the lab are red-bean-paste Oreos (not a hit with Chinese kids) and a Ritz cracker flavored like fish boiled in spicy Sichuan peppercorn oil (probably not a hit with anyone at all).

The year 2006 had witnessed a huge demand for rectangular version of cream-filled Oreo in China, where it was named the “best-selling biscuit item”. According to Todayonline.com, Kraft China's president, Shawn Warren, alludes to "tests" being done in the United States also. This shall mark the introduction of Rectangular Oreos in US markets too in near future.